The people who did this are my parents and I am doing everything I can to minimize their influence in my life, but it is difficult, especially as an only child.

In most states they heavily influence or control the state real estate agencies.

If asked, that's a different matter, now your making representations that they may make a decision on that influences the accepting an offer and with a government entity or a bank, that can be an issue. :)

This is due to the influence of unfavorable factors on housing and mortgage markets.

Because of this, the only people that'll be in Pittsburgh are older generations (who already have homes or if they don't, won't be looking for one) and rural Pennsylvanias who treat Pittsburgh as their Philly or NYC with less "liberal influence". 

What influences guided you? 

Poor academic research that hopefully will not influence policy much.  

How much are are renting the property for would influence my design decisions. 

As you and Account Closed both said there is a lot of personal preference and scale that influences multiple solutions that work.My personal preference is to have Managers do as little as possible, and as a result do not want them to have any involvement whatsoever with collecting rent.  

Any country's people is free to move here, gain an influence, change policies, etc. which will affect the rest of the world.